This is Rosie Talaga with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast.
Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by Bruce
Feldman, administrator of Eastern Orange Ambulatory Surgery Center,
to talk about some of the biggest trends
in the ASC industry.
Bruce, it's a pleasure to have you on
the podcast today. Thank you very much. Pleasure
to be here. Can you please take a
moment to introduce yourself and your work in
the industry?
Sure. My name is Bruce Feldman.
I am in the ASC administrator for Easton
Auditorium Military Surgery Center. We're a 4 operating
room, 2 endoscopy suite,
freestanding ASC located in Cornwall, New York. I've
been in the ASC industry now for about
30
years, running a number of freestanding ambulatory surgery
centers as well as ASCs that are joint
ventures
with large academic hospital centers predominantly in the
New York and New Jersey area.
Great. Thank you so much. Sure. So our
first question surrounds the prediction that ASC volume
across the country is expected to increase by
16%
by 2032.
With this growth, what are the most pressing
challenges to maintaining a positive patient experience?
Well, I think the most,
challenge is gonna really going to be to
keep up
with the acuity level
of these cases.
More and more of these cases that are
shifting from a hospital setting
are of a higher level acuity.
And, not always ASCs have, you know, appropriate,
staff
that have the educational
training to deal with some of these more
complex cases.
You know, ASCs many years ago were basically
mostly very simple straightforward cases, you know, ophthalmology,
GI.
Now we're getting into complex cardiac cases,
complex orthopedic cases.
So,
I think the biggest, challenge is really to
make sure that you have the your staff
have the educational training
to be able to meet the, the clinical
needs of the patients. Mhmm.
And when you talk about the the staff
training for complex cases
and keeping up with the high acuity cases,
what strategies have worked for your organization to
tackle these challenges?
Well, I think we've done a lot of
partnering with some of the vendors like Smith
and Nephew and Stryker.
You know, they provide people to come in
house,
and do in service educational sessions and training.
That has helped a great deal.
I think you have to really get all
your physicians involved as well when you're bringing
in a new clinical service line to make
sure that, you know, your staffing has the
appropriate educational knowledge.
So it's really a partnership between your vendors,
your doctors,
and making sure that everybody is kind of
on board with what you're trying to accomplish.
Got it.
So
thank you so much for sharing those strategies.
Sure. And I'd also like to hear your
thoughts on another prevalent issue which is the
cost of care.
So how do you think leaders can ensure
that their staff are well equipped to help
patients navigate the financial aspects of their care?
Well, that that's where the difficulty lies, you
know, lies because
as these higher acuity cases shift from the
hospital into the ASC environment,
reimbursement
has not met up with that.
So it's very difficult to provide, you know,
high quality of care at a higher cost,
when your staff are not necessarily used to
being so cost conscious, so to speak.
So I think, again, it comes back to
making your staff aware
that a lot of these cases
are higher acuity level, but we still have
our costs that we have to keep in
mind.
So we one of the things we do
like orthopedics is we develop PACS
for certain procedures. So you're not opening up
an entire tray
and going through a ton of instruments.
You have set instruments specific for that procedure.
So that's a strategy that we've used, and
I know other centers have used
to keep your costs down,
and, you know, maintain, the same quality of,
of care. Got it. In these packs, how
do you see that benefiting the patient to
provide a relationship?
Well, I I think it's better because you're
not you're not wasting,
supplies and equipment.
The patients are getting, their procedures done in
a quicker period of time,
because it can be faster.
You know, staff don't have to go out
of the room to look for instrumentation because
it's not in the tray. So everything just
moves along more efficiently.
Mhmm. The pay the patient gets done with
their procedure quicker,
quicker recovery time, and they're home.
Great.
Lastly, are there any additional
challenges, innovations, or anything else on top of
your mind for the industry that you'd like
to talk about? Well, I think one of
the biggest challenges is obviously the anesthesia shortage.
And, I've attended some sessions here earlier, and
everybody has the same concerns.
You know, we're trying to develop innovative strategies
with our anesthesia providers
to see how we can benefit on both
sides of the equation. So that that's, I
think, is gonna be the greatest challenge
for ASCs moving forward is how do we
handle this huge shortage
of anesthesiologists,
and how can we continue to provide
appropriate anesthesia services to our patients
when reimbursement
all around continues to decline.
Absolutely.
Well, thank you so much for joining us
today and for speaking at Becker's 30th annual
ASC meeting. It's been a pleasure. Sure. And
I look forward to connecting with you soon.
Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you.